How Citizens United may not have played out the way we thought, and how Corporate America lost control of the GOP, but don't worry it's still about the money

by Ken

"How did corporate America lose control of the Republican Party?" asks NYT business and economics columnist Eduardo Porter at the start of his "Economic Scene" column today, "Business Losing Clout in a G.O.P. Moving Right, and I guess that is his subject. But along the way he raises some related but separate questions, and issues, and an assortment of supporting facts, or theories, or contentions, some of which seem closer to facts and others closer to assertions. So it's hard to know exactly what to make of it all, except that (a) it all has to do with money in politics and government and (b) it's all interesting.

Maybe I was thrown because the most striking single point made is a sort of backup to a related proposition -- the proposition being "that corporate money may be playing a much smaller role in the political process than expected," and the backup being that the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision, which said that since corporations have the rights of citizens, their ability to contribute to campaigns is sacred.

What? Okay, here's the case as Porter lays it out:

Concern about the potential consequences of Citizens United stem from a not unreasonable belief that businesses will do anything on this side of the law -- and sometimes beyond it -- to produce legislation that serves their corporate interests.

So when the Supreme Court opened the sluice gate in 2010 allowing unlimited campaign contributions, pretty much every liberal voice in the country believed that a flood of corporate cash was about to deliver the political system to the Republican Party.

It was, President Obama said, "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

Three years later, however, these fears have not quite materialized. Money is flowing to elections like never before. The 2012 elections cost some $6.3 billion, $1 billion more than the 2008 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that researches money and politics. Independent spending by outside groups on campaign advertisements and the like topped $1 billion last year.

Corporate America, however, accounted for a comparative trickle. Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University, points out in a recent working paper that companies openly spent about $75 million from their treasuries on federal elections last year.

Even if all the hidden money funneled into campaigns through private 501(c) organizations had come from businesses -- unlikely given the contributions by noncorporate groups like Planned Parenthood and the N.R.A. -- corporate spending would not reach $400 million, still a small share of the total.

There are a lot of shaky numbers here, and I'd like to see it all vetted by people who are intimately familiar with the ins and outs of corporate giving and campaign finance. But these numbers certainly suggest a reality far different from what we expected in post-Citizens United elections.

Once we wade into explanations for this apparent phenomenon, though, the ground gets shakier. One obvious theory as it relates to expenditures on congressional races: The Congress we have now isn't worth what it would cost to buy, or rent, at least from a corporate standpoint. Though Porter doesn't make the point, Corporate America has gotten pretty much everything it could have wanted from the Congresses that did its bidding before gridlock set in. Of course there's always a corporate wish list, but they're so far down on their list that they're down to minutiae, and realistically they're mostly interested in exercising veto power over, say, crazy stuff like increased environmental regulation. But the fact is that neither this Congress nor any for the foreseeable future has any shot at enacting anything along these lines that Corporate America could object to.

If your interest is ideological, Porter suggests, it may still be worth your while to buy a Congress; hence the rise of the new class of megabucks individual contributors, whose number is heavily weighted to those right-wing billionaires whose free spending has made the Republican Party's lurch to the right affordable. However, if your interest is business, your money is probably better spent on lobbying Congress -- and maybe buying at least an influence-level interest in state legislatures.

Overall, the message is still: It's about the money. Porter concludes:

If big-money people are drowning out the political voice of ordinary Americans rather than big business, American democracy still has a problem. But it is not the problem we thought we had.

Along the way, though, a slew of theories are tossed in the pot. If you're rationing your NYT free clicks, let me save you one.

ECONOMIC SCENE
Business Losing Clout in a G.O.P. Moving Right

By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: September 3, 2013

How did corporate America lose control of the Republican Party?

From overhauling immigration laws to increasing spending on the nation's aging infrastructure, big business leaders have seemed relatively powerless lately as the uncompromising Republicans they helped elect have steadfastly opposed some of their core legislative priorities.

The rift is not only unusual in light of the tight historical alignment between the business community and the G.O.P., but it is also outright incomprehensible after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which allowed companies to spend unlimited amounts from their corporate treasuries on the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Scholars have proposed many reasons for the rise of the anti-government activists that are pulling the G.O.P. to the right, leaving it at odds with a business community used to compromising and seeking favors from government.

But what may be most surprising is how reluctant big business has been to put its money on the line. To put it mildly, if companies could purchase the Congress of their choice, it's unlikely they would buy the gridlocked Congress we have. The seemingly inexorable rise of political partisans -- mainly on the right, but on the left, too -- suggests that corporate money may be playing a much smaller role in the political process than expected.

Concern about the potential consequences of Citizens United stem from a not unreasonable belief that businesses will do anything on this side of the law -- and sometimes beyond it -- to produce legislation that serves their corporate interests.

So when the Supreme Court opened the sluice gate in 2010 allowing unlimited campaign contributions, pretty much every liberal voice in the country believed that a flood of corporate cash was about to deliver the political system to the Republican Party.

It was, President Obama said, "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

Three years later, however, these fears have not quite materialized. Money is flowing to elections like never before. The 2012 elections cost some $6.3 billion, $1 billion more than the 2008 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that researches money and politics. Independent spending by outside groups on campaign advertisements and the like topped $1 billion last year.

Corporate America, however, accounted for a comparative trickle. Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University, points out in a recent working paper that companies openly spent about $75 million from their treasuries on federal elections last year.

Even if all the hidden money funneled into campaigns through private 501(c) organizations had come from businesses -- unlikely given the contributions by noncorporate groups like Planned Parenthood and the N.R.A. -- corporate spending would not reach $400 million, still a small share of the total.

Perhaps this should not be surprising. For companies, spending on elections can be risky. Business executives might prefer lobbying, where they spend far more than on campaign contributions, not because the limits are more relaxed but because swaying legislators on both sides of the aisle is more effective at getting what they want. And such lobbying is less likely to kindle anger among consumers, shareholders and other constituents than spending to change the outcome of elections.

"While Citizens alters the ability of corporations to contribute to campaigns, it does not alter their substantial risk in doing so," the political scientists Wendy L. Hansen, Michael Rocca and Brittany Ortiz of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, argued in a recent study.

Still, corporations' reluctance to open their checkbooks suggests an intriguing alternative explanation for the rise of Republicans who are willing to defy their will: companies may have spent too little. Their money was swamped by that of big individual donors who are more ideologically extreme. In 2012, the top 0.1 percent of donors contributed more than 44 percent of all campaign contributions. In 1980 their share of contributions was less than 10 percent.

Corporations have a pro-Republican bias, of course. But it is not quite as extreme as pop culture would have it, and is certainly less pronounced than organized labor's pro-Democrat leanings.

Effective lobbying requires both Republican and Democratic friends. Political action committees run by businesses are known for spreading money on both sides of the partisan divide. They give to incumbents. They choose winners. They show little partisan loyalty.

In the 2006 elections, when the G.O.P. controlled Congress, corporate PACs gave 65 percent of their money to Republicans. In 2008 and 2010, after the Democrats had swept both the House and Senate, they split their contributions roughly fifty-fifty.

By contrast, substantial research in political science suggests that individual donors favor more ideological candidates and are less strategic in their giving. Big, frequent donors are particularly extreme.

An analysis of polarization of state legislatures by Michael Barber, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Princeton, finds that limits on corporate contributions lead to more partisan polarization, while limits on individual contributions moderate it.

There are alternative explanations for the rise of the uncompromising right within the G.O.P.

Mark Mizruchi, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, traces the rift back decades. He put it to me this way: "In the 1970s it would have been inconceivable that Republicans would tell business" to get lost.

Last May, he published "The Fracturing of the Corporate Elite," about business' waning influence over the political process. He suggests the power of the business lobby started waning after it succeeded at beating back government regulation and organized labor in the late 1970s. Corporations then turned to narrow individual agendas and gradually lost force as a collective power that could impose discipline on the G.O.P.

Other analyses have suggested a shift in the party base from the industrial Northeast to the conservative rural South, the ideological polarization of voters and the gerrymandering of House districts into safe partisan seats that favored uncompromising, ideologically pure candidates.

That argument can be carried only so far, however. Jacob S. Hacker, a political scientist from Yale, said that the idea of a rift opening between businesses and the "party of business" was overstated.

Corporations continue to spend more on Republicans, he points out. They are unlikely to jump ship, especially when a Democratic administration is working on new regulations over financial services, health care and energy that business views as potentially onerous.

Despite concerns about the tactics of some Republican ideologues, the Chamber of Commerce and several other business organizations still support many of Republicans' low-tax goals.

And even if corporations didn't turn on the spending spigot, their executives did. Mr. Bonica of Stanford estimates that executives and directors of Fortune 500 companies spent a whopping $217 million on state and federal elections, more than twice as much as the same individuals spent four years earlier. That's about 70 percent of what was spent by more than 1,500 corporate PACs.

But that doesn't undermine the point that the reluctance of corporations to spend on politics is likely to limit their role as a stabilizing force.

Corporate chiefs and other top executives do not put money into campaigns merely to favor their firms. Mr. Bonica finds their giving is more ideological and less strategic than that of their companies. They rarely switch candidates: only 43 of the 1,400 or so executives of Fortune 500 companies who contributed to presidential campaigns last year gave to both sides.

That suggests a new take on the role of money in politics. If big-money people are drowning out the political voice of ordinary Americans rather than big business, American democracy still has a problem. But it is not the problem we thought we had.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

As GOP guvs nix Medicaid expansion, Zap says: "Republicans are way past the point of being shamed by any action they perform"

"You may recall that a few weeks ago President Obama came to this chamber, and he addressed the chamber on health care before a joint session of the House and the Senate. During that session I was privileged to be here, and I saw my colleagues on the far side of the aisle, the Republicans, waving pieces of paper during his speech. And I was wondering what they were. I couldn't imagine. It almost seemed like they wanted President Obama's autograph. I just didn't get it.

"I heard from one of my colleagues that this is what they called the Republican Health Care Plan. I went over after the speech was over. I picked up a copy that was lying down on the Republican side, and it turns out that the Republicans' Health Care Plan was a blank piece of paper. I inquired further, trying to find out exactly what the Republicans; health care plan is, and it's my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America. It's this. [Turning to easel with cards] Very simply -- it's a very simple plan -- here it is, the Republican Healh Care Plan for America: 'Don't get sick.' That's right, don't get sick! If you have insurance, don't get sick! If you don't have insurance, don't get sick! If you're sick, don't get sick! Just don't get sick! That's what the Republicans have in mind for you, America. That's the Republicans' Health Care Plan.

"But I think that the Republicans understand that that plan isn't always going to work. It's not a foolproof plan. So the Republicans have a backup plan, in case you do get sick. If you get sick in America, this is what the Republicans want you to do. [Turning over new card] If you get sick, America, the Republican Health Care Plan is this: 'DIE QUICKLY.' That's right, the Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."


"Trying to shame Republican Governors over their refusal of funds to improve the health of their citizens is a monumental and narcissistic waste of time."

-- Zappatero, in a SquareState post, "Death Panels come to life: Republican Governors refuse to help their own citizens"

by Ken

We've all seen this Alan Grayson clip a zillion times, I know. I still thought it was worth making it a zillion and one. Because Republican governors in the wake of the Supreme Court's upholding of much of the Affordable Care Act, with the signal exception of the federal government's ability to threaten states into participating in the expanded Medicaid program, are planning more and more cop-outs, showing us how right Alan G has been all along.

Earlier this week our Colorado colleague Zappatero, inspired by Joan McCarter's Daily Kos post "Republican governors will let people die to make political point," asked on SquareState: "What can you say about these assholes?"

He began his post, "Death Panels come to life: Republican Governors refuse to help their own citizens," by quoting from Joan McCarter's post, then continued on his own.

Proving that making a political point is more important to Republicans than anything else, including saving potentially millions of lives, an increasing number of Republican governors are announcing that they'll refuse the Medicaid expansion money from the federal government. Think Progress has been tracking the state's decisions and has found, so far, 10 Republican governors will refuse it, and another 19 are unsure.

Something Democrats have forgotten as this "argument" has progessed:

* Republicans are way past the point of being shamed by any action they perform. Trying to shame Republican Governors over their refusal of funds to improve the health of their citizens is a monumental and narcissistic waste of time.

* Any, and I mean ANY penny, dime, quarter, or dollar, obtained by ANY government, be that local, state, or federal, to be used for ANY purpose, let alone a common public good like the "general welfare" (sound familiar?) of its citizens, is stolen and should be returned to its owner immediately.

* Health Insurance, not to mention Health Care (Jesus Forbid!) is not a right, nor even an entitlement. If you can't afford it, then you are obviously not worthy and, as Alan Grayson says: if you get sick, you better die fast so as not to burden your family. Let the Free Market prevail!

* Corporations are people, the only people recognized by Republicans, and they are the people who deserve most from governments' ability to choose winners, skew policy to favor one group, or refrain another group from impinging on their inalienable right to make every last frickin' cent available from The Market.

These are the people with whom we are supposed to be bipartisan.

And all I can say to Democrats, until they realize the truth, is bring your own lubricant, because this ain't going to be pleasurable trying to improve upon the "tax" and bill that the Dread Justice Roberts just affirmed. And thank your local Physician Practitioner that we [i.e., in Colorado] have a "Democrat" Governor: John Hickenlooper can bow at the alter of Natural Gas Fracking, but he wouldn't dare decline health care money for our poorest citizens and their children, would he?

Alan Grayson took a lot of heat for that snarky but altogether accurate characterization of the GOP idea of a health care policy as encouraging people to die quickly. Recent events have only reinforced that basic accuracy.

"Republicans are way past the point of being shamed by any action they perform. Trying to shame Republican Governors over their refusal of funds to improve the health of their citizens is a monumental and narcissistic waste of time."

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For an authentic "Village Christmas," how can you go wrong with authentic Dem and GOP tchotchkes?

"Capitol Hill Club Merchandise Makes Great Gifts!" That's the message of the GOP club's holiday merchandise page. For that special gift that tells the giftee how you really feel about him/her, check out these cherished GOP tchotchkes. Also available: such treasures as computer bag (adjustable strap, black, $30), men's silk tie & women's silk scarf (red, yellow or periwinkle, made in France, $35; there's also a combo pack of the cap, shirt and bag, a $65 value, for only $55!), cuff links (white/blue or blue/gold, $30), golf divot tool ($12), crystal paper weight ($45), Limoges porcelain box ($45). Um, wait a second there -- "made in France"???

by Ken

I know I cast some unkind aspersions on latterday political polling yesterday. Let me make amends by pointing out that, if there's anything those polls keep telling us the American people love, it's:

* their Congress, and

* their two major political parties.

Naturally it's only to be expected that these loves will carry over into patriotic Americans' all-important holiday shopping, bearing in mind that, in the wake of 9/11, as former President George W. Bush cautioned us, if we don't shop till we drop, the terrorists win. And who better to service this patriotic longing than our pal Al Kamen, who has this to report in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column today?

A party Christmas?

Been working your tail off during the lame-duck and haven't had time to shop for Christmas gifts for politically interested friends and family? Don't worry. There's still time - as long as you move with some dispatch.

Lots of local tourist shops and online gift stores sell Republican and Democratic party wares. But buying in those places is pretty tacky if you're a real inside-the-Beltway type. After all, you want your out-of-town relatives to know they got genuine swag from the actual combatants

Both the Democratic and Republican House campaign committees have a wide assortment of mostly lower-end stuff: baby clothes, baseball caps, T-shirts, mugs, notepads, pens and such.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has some similar items, but its GOP counterpart apparently doesn't have a shop, at least nothing on the Web.

For more upscale items, you might want to try the two parties' traditional watering holes on the Hill: The Republicans' Capitol Hill Club and the National Democratic Club. Neither offers a particularly wide array of goods, but they do have fine-quality ties, cuff links and such.

One problem is that the Democrats sell their stuff only at the club, and you've got to be a member or be with one to go in. (What happened to the party of the people, of inclusion and all that?) So it's who you know.

The GOP club, however, lets you shop online and, even better, has a keen sense of its clientele's tastes. Thus we find a "Limoges porcelain box" with elephants on the side selling for $45, a crystal paperweight for $45, and, yes, a "golf divot tool" embossed with a GOP seal for just $12. (A sure-fire dazzler at the Legends golf course in Massillon, Ohio.)

The GOP club also has men's silk ties and women's silk scarves with cavorting elephants playing musical instruments. They come in red, yellow or periwinkle, we are told, and are made in France.

French ties? Have we forgotten the Coalition of the Willing?

SPEAKING OF CONGRESS AND OUR BELOVED POLITICAL
PARTIES, ANY CHANCE OF SHUTTING "MISS MITCH" UP?

Am I the only one who experiences a seizure of actual physical revulsion whenever Sen. "Miss Mitch" McConnell opens that lying trap of his to yammer about "what the American people want"? Does anyone believe Auntie Mitch either knows or cares what the American people want? Except, of course, insofar as it helps his people to strategize force-feeding them the hooey inspired by his own reactionary political agenda and, more important, that of the moneyed folk who make it possible for him to continue to enjoy the lifestyle he's grown accustomed to as the Senate's chief Republican whore.

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Tom Tomorrow explains the Dem and Repub Parties (and Sarah Palin offers her most incisive comment ever: "?!")

You know you're dealing with genius when a comic strip culminates in a frame where three iconic GOP figures make the following
contributions:

KARL ROVE: What's with these Dems? We gave them the country on a silver platter last year! They couldn't have blown it any faster if they'd been trying. . . . Hey, you don't suppose . . .

DICK CHENEY: Hmmmmm . . .

SARAH PALIN: ?!

Don't forget to click on the comic to enlarge it. -- Ken

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The 2008 presidential campaign is shaping up as a now-typical GOP one -- and, alas, an all-too-typical Democratic one

ON THE GOP SIDE --

[The usual drill: Click to enlarge.]

AND ON THE DEMS' SIDE --

by Noah

I often suspect that, after he apparently won the nomination, Obama was pulled into a room and told by the folks who really run things that he had done a nice job and now THIS IS HOW IT'S GONNA BE. It's like the Clintons smiled knowingly and told him they would be his initiation guides into the secret club, while the masters smiled approvingly on the other side of the two-way mirror. The Obama CHANGE is more than running left in the primary and moving right in the general, it's a personality change. Forced or chosen?

Sleep well. :) We may just live in the 9th Circle. Read the sign on the door. Hope? My ass.

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CIA, MAFIA, CASTRO, JFK, GOP...

I hate conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory buffs. But in light of the CIA publishing-- being forced to pulish-- over 700 pages of documents, The Family Jewels, pertaining to, among other nefarious undertakings of our government, the plot to assasinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1960, does anyone think maybe we should get some competent investigators to look into who exactly did kill JFK?

The mass media hasn't exactly jumped all over this, but I found a report in the Chicago Tribune today, probably because of the Mafia connection. The report trivializes the attempted assasination of Castro (and the successful assasination of Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, the effects of which are still being felt today in that most unfortunate of countries).

Some disclosures, such as the CIA's ill-fated attempts to enlist Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana to arrange the assassination of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, by hiring someone to slip CIA-manufactured poison pills in Castro's "food or drink," have become the stuff of popular legend and even the subject of movies.

An aside to the plot against Castro was Giancana's concern that his then-companion, singer Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Systers, was seeing comedian Dan Rowan on the side while both were appearing at the same Las Vegas hotel. Giancana persuaded the CIA to send one of its technicians to bug Rowan's hotel room, but the technician was surprised in the act and arrested.

The U.S. Justice Department signalled its intention to prosecute the technician and also Robert Maheu, the Las Vegas public relations executive who had served as liaison between the CIA and the Mafia, the CIA intervened and "at our request, the prosecution was dropped."

The papers describe the CIA's man to work with on the assasination of Castro as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone." The attempt failed but there are those who think it... inspired the assasination of JFK.

According to an account in the Guardian the plot to kill Castro started in 1960 because he was judged to be a "Soviet stooge."

The documents released yesterday describe how a CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro."

The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval."

Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements." Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the 'syndicate' (who) controlled all the ice-making machines on the (Las Vegas) Strip and (who) undoubtedly had connections leading into the Cuban gambling interests."

The CIA is careful to cover its tracks. According to the dossier, Maheu told Roselli that he (Maheu) has been retained by international businesses suffering "heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action. They were convinced that Castro's removal was the answer to their problem and were willing to pay the price of $150,000 (£75,000) for its successful accomplishment."

Roselli was also told that the US government was not, and must not become aware of the operation.

Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine.

Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone." Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations.

At a meeting at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Gold/Giancana suggested that rather than try to shoot or blow up Mr Castro, "some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro's food or drink would be much more effective."

He said a corrupt Cuban official, named as Juan Orta, who was in debt to the syndicate and had access to the Cuban leader, would carry out the poisoning. The CIA subsequently obtained and supplied "six pills of high lethal content" to Orta but after several weeks of abortive attempts, Orta demanded "out" of the operation.

Ah... today's Washington Post has a column on the story with an interesting ending I had forgotten about: "Roselli later told columnist Jack Anderson about the plot after the CIA refused to help him fight deportation. He disappeared shortly after testifying to the Church Committee. His body was later found in a 55-gallon oil drum near the coastline of North Miami Beach."